JD Shep’s Game Fly Rental Review Summer Extravaganza #5 was originally posted as a Facebook note on 07/11/2010. Minor changes were made to the content and format.

Fifth on the list from Game Fly was “Prince of Persia (2008)” for the Xbox 360.

“Prince of Persia” is a 3rd person Action/Adventure plat former game. Another Ubisoft game to add to my played games list. I have not played the other Prince of Persias, so therefore I have no previous experience on this franchise. However, this is a different protagonist.

Personal Stats:
I unlocked 39 of 60 achievements for 640 points out of 1250 points. I should have received a few more, but was unsure why I did not achieve those. I thought I did everything I was supposed to do. There was another handful that required me to go back to healed lands, and I did not pursue those because I had played the game long enough. There was an achievement for playing the game in fewer than 12 hours…I did not achieve that one either.

Quick Synopsis:The “Prince” is a nomadic tomb raider who bumps into Princess Elika while she is being chased in a major sand storm. You protect her because she is hot and you want to score some brownie points with her. Wait…did they have brownies back in ancient Persia? So after saving her the first time you find out what she is up to.

The dark, evil, rather large god Ahriman is escaping his tree prison. His prison is controlled by the legendary, magical, fertile grounds of an Ahuran city. Your mission, that you chose to accept, for no apparent, good reason, is to help this Princess, who was just given blue magical abilities from the other god Ormazd (brothers btw), to stop Ahriman and restore the lands.

You do this by going through the corrupted filled land using cool acrobatic moves: walking, running, jumping, magically delicious Elika jumps, wall running, swinging, ceiling running, wall sliding, and leaps of faiths…er…o wait, wrong Ubisoft game. You fight enemies from time to time using your sword, gauntlet, and Elika’s magic. You will never, ever die. If you fall, or you are about to die because of an enemy, Elika will be there to save you. How sweet. You can also carry on conversations with Elika and learn more about her, her land, and the situation you put yourself in even though you did not have to. There are puzzles to do along the way to the fertile grounds as well.

Once you have made it to your destination by following Elika’s magical compass, you restore the land to its beautifulness by rapidly pressing “Y” over the fertile ground while Elika has a big O. Once you heal the land, magical light seeds appear that unlocks more magic for Elika and she is extremely appreciative of this. They basically unlock different traveling plates / lands to heal. There are 4 different plates: 2 are very similar and basically fling you to the next plate or platform, one is a controlled flying one, and the other is a controlled running one.

What is corruption you may ask? Well it is basically black tar (similar to Armus in Star Trek TNG: “Skin of Evil”) that is from Ahriman and controls people to do his bidding. You have 4 bosses that you fight 5 times with Quick Time Events that come up at random times. Each time you encounter the boss it becomes more ‘difficult’. You really don’t kill them, you heal them/send them back to tree prison. During this time you grow found of Elika and there is increasing flirtation with sexual tension. Then you ‘fight’ Ahriman. I will not do a spoiler, but let’s just say it is left open for a sequel with you saying ‘Really?!? WTF? O come on!! I spent 12 hours on my @$$ for that?!?’

Pros:

Graphics:
1) What a beautiful, cell shaded game. All the distances looked awesome and the characters as well. There was very minimal texture pop-in. There were; however, a few graphical glitches, but what game does not have that?

Audio:
2) The dialogue was witty and tongue to cheek. A lot that was said made me giggle.

Game Play:
3) This game is not about fighting at all, it is all about the acrobatics. They are fun and personally what made this game. But it did take Fiend75002 telling me this as I vented about the pace of the game.

4) The camera during non-fighting sequences was well placed. It enabled you to see what you were doing and what you needed to do.

Cons:

Game Play:
1) Whether it was during normal acrobatic game play, fighting, or quick time events the buttons seemed non responsive or slow to respond. Making it to where Elika has to save you, or you getting knocked back on your backside.

2) Trying to remember which buttons to choose for which sequence type of acrobatic jumps became quite annoying. You might have to do three different button combos to do one thing.

3) The camera during fighting sequences can become the second enemy at times.

4) The running and flying plates, oh how I hated those. If you didn’t dodge an obstacle just right you will have to start the sequence over again. Within the flying one because of the ‘warp’ effect it was difficult to tell. This is the leading contribution to why I did not get the achievement for beating it in less than 12 hours.

Conclusion:If you are wanting non-stop on the edge of your recliner action, this is not the game for you. If you want a quick game that you can beat and move on, this is not the game for you. This game has been said to be easy and it is in a sense that you are not constantly fighting enemies. But the controls can get to the point that it is what makes the game challenging. It did take me awhile to get the acrobatics down right, never could do the QTEs like I wanted. As far as ratings, all the other reviewers put it at an 8 of 10 or higher. I would say that this is a 3) Big Sale / 5, but there is no game play after you beat it.